STORY NO.

02

The Everett Writers' Room

Our plan

With current class sizes and ever-growing teacher-student ratios, it is impossible for even the most effective teachers to give sufficient one-on-one attention to their students. 826 Valencia supports teachers at Everett Middle School by offering individualized attention to students on writing assignments. With our team of volunteers coming directly to the classroom, each child is given a personal instructor, and teachers are able to carry out exciting projects that would have been impossible to manage on their own. We made initial connections to teachers and administrators at Everett through our regular student programming. We were working often with the language arts department, and soon had a request from the principal to participate in the school community in a long term and permanent way. Everett saw a lot of value in bringing professionals in the community into their school to help out with academic projects. We were allotted one classroom from which to operate, and managed to fundraise to support the program. Our approach works in a simple yet effective way: a teacher sends half of her class to the Writers' Room to work with our volunteers while she works with the other half. This allows her to cut her class size in half so that all students receive significantly more attention and feedback.

What we did

We work with all students multiple times at each grade level. Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade writing standards are addressed as our tutors support each individual teacher's classroom assignments using the teacher's rubrics and scaffolding tools when working with students. Skilled adult volunteers work one-on-one with the students to provide individualized attention. When eighth graders were assigned to write letters from the colonial New World, they worked with 826 tutors over three weeks, researching and outlining facts about the colonies, brainstorming what they wanted to include, writing drafts of the letters and finalizing their work. After going through the research and writing process with this kind of support, we see the final products improve dramatically. More importantly, we see students' basic skills improve, which allows them to approach their next writing task with greater confidence and success.

Our results

Ninety-seven percent of the students who worked in the Everett Writers' Room this year indicated that they felt "having a tutor made a difference" in both the quality of their writing and their attitude towards the project. Evaluating one of the projects, "Letters from the Colonies," eighth grader Giancarlo said, "They [the tutors] helped me by making the assignment more understandable." Classmate Nallely wrote, "I think the tutors' help is a great thing because that way we can improve our writing." After working with 826's trained tutors on a descriptive essay assignment in January, sixth grader Eyrusalem told us, "The best thing about the 826 tutors is that they are kind and they are good at teaching." And several student evaluations noted with appreciation the quiet atmosphere of the Writers' Room. Not only did the students' writing improve, but grades rose too. For example, during the first quarter of the school year, 74 percent of eighth graders from Kathy Cantrell's class saw their grades rise on projects with 826 tutor support. Almost half the class (47 percent) had double-digit gains.

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Charles Dickens School
Vancouver, BC, Canada